Victoria Darlington
Personality Victoria is a dreamer and an explorer. She longs to learn, and she longs to learn about all things. This drive trancends most ordinary drives to learn, however. She seeks to learn facts about the universe, like the scientists, yes. But it goes beyond that. Like the scientists, she seeks facts about how the universe works. Like the hackers, she sees information about how the world works, whats being kept secret, and the nature of information itself. Like the mystics, she seeks information about her own mind and how it works. Like the psychologists and the dreamers, she seeks to learn why others think and feel the way they do, too. This sort of scope goes beyond normal hungers for learning. She is very driven in this sense, ambitious for knowledge.But at the same time this hunger for knowledge is tempered by patience and, in a way, silence. She will not violate her notions of ethics or philosophy for the sake of quick learning or an easier path. In a way, her pursuit is very inwardly focused, rather then outwardly focused. This isn't to say she wouldn't like to make the world a better place, but she realizes that, in the end, someone who disagrees with her (or is a sleeper) has to -want- to become more enlightened. You can't force wisdom or even simple knowledge upon anyone. So while she does what she can for those she can, she also focuses on trying to improve herself, primarily. For what use is it to try and improve others or the world if one does not better themselves? Not that much of this comes across in her average, everyday interactions in the physical world, of course. Being a Virtual Adept, her 'real' personality and her inner thoughts and persona can be a bit different. In the meat, she can easily come across as shy and reserved. But when something is at stake, or when one has gotten to know her, or when she's in the Dreaming realms or Virtual World...well, then her actual personality tends to shine through more often then not. Expertises & Specialties Specialties: Intelligence: Creative Computer: Hacking Expertise: Science: Mathematics, Physics, Psychology, Biology Technology: Computers Lore: Dreaming Academics: Philosophy, Literature Performance: Acting Merits & Flaws Flaw: Lifesaver - Victoria is very firm in her moral and philosophical principles. She makes a concerted effort to actually act in a way that lives up to what she has decided is right, and what she has decided is wrong. Therefore, she will not participate in senseless death and/or violence, and will attempt to protect Sleepers in her presence if it is at all possible for her to do so. She will not let a Sleeper die, be put at risk, or suffer for her moral beliefs if she can prevent this from happening however, and thus will kill to protect the Sleepers, or those whom endanger them, barring only certain willfully ignorant/evil Sleepers whom are beyond the boundries of what one could term an innocent. She won't even necessarily kill to protect herself, preferring to find a way to disable such an opponent first, if possible. Flaw: Driving Goal -''' Victoria seeks both personal enlightenment, and global awakening of the sleepers. She realizes that both are impossible and unlikely goals, but she seeks them anyways. One of her deepest motivations, along these lines, is to continuously improve herself morally, intellectually, and spiritually. This is different from your average mage which might say 'Oh yeah this is a nice thing' in some abstract sense in that she actually gives a damn about it, and on an average basis is actually trying to do it, even if only in very small steps. '''Flaw: Strangeness - Partially due to the amount of time she spends in strange mental landscapes, Victoria is very prone to strange events. Often these have an archetypical or dreamlike quality to them, but they can, as per the flaw, take any sort of aspect. On an OOC note, this flaw is probably great for inducing randomn rp. Also, for potential ideas on what might -really- be causing this, or at least contributing, see her Avatar notes. Merit: Force of Personality - Though Victoria can seem quiet, shy and reserved at times, especially in the physical world, when she does bring the weight of her drive and convictions to bear, she's hard to ignore, even if you disagree with her. Some people just have a sort of inner fire, and she's one of them. Merit: Code of Honor - Though the philosophical justifications and minor details change depending on Victoria's current philosophical and ethical musings, in general Victoria does a rather rare thing, compared to most people. Namely, she attempts to actually live out her ethical beliefs, even if they are a hideous inconvenience to her, or would make her suffer in some way. This includes not shopping at Wal-mart, which most people wouldn't bother with, but also extends to things like not killing someone whose attacking her if she can disable them instead. She also doesn't break her given word, though she has no problem tricking or deceiving those that deserve it, if she makes a promise she'll stick to it. Note that despite her moral attitudes in other regards, such as life (see above), she still has a 'hacker morality', which is to say, you can steal information all you want because noone can own it, and doing things to free information, even if that would otherwise cause financial or property harm, isn't immoral as long as no real people or items get hurt. She's more reserved about stealing of 'physical' stuff, and probably wouldn't do it unless she had a good reason. But she has no problem destroying corporate computer systems, financial records, and so on, or waging wars of information and perception in the Digital Web. Neither does she have a problem 'hacking' into people's dreams or thoughts. Information, after all, is free and should be open to all. Merit: Lightning Calculator ''' - Victoria has a mind like the edge of a razor. This has been honed through studying mathematics, physics, biology, psychology...the traditional scientific disciplines...but also through study of meditation, lucid dreaming, and explorations of mental Dreamscapes. Moreover, because of her paradigm, her mind often literally doubles as a computer for her. '''Merit: Fast Learner - See: Merit - Lightning Calculator Current Paradigm Technically speaking, Victoria is a member of a fringe faction in the Virtual Adepts called "Reality Hackers". All Virtual Adepts want to change the world, and have a focus on 'upgrading' humanity from our world, Reality 1.0, to a new world, Reality 2.0. Traditional Virtual adepts do this via hypertechnology and virtual reality, creating a technological singularity they can escape into. Reality hackers, however, do them one better. They hold that the entire universe is one big computer program. Physics are the rules of the programming system, while the things like birds, flowers, stars, people, are the code itself. Like the Matrix, basically. So instead of hacking into some remote VR world, they want to hack reality itself. Victoria does this via her mind, using her mind and dreams as a computer in the same fashion that 'traditional' virtual adepts might use some electronic super-computer they've built. This allows her to do almost all of the traditional things 'normal' Virtual Adepts do, including access the Virtual Web, hack into comptuer systems, spy on remote locatiions, etc...but also other things that they couldn't begin to imagine, like hack into other people's dreams, store files and information within her mind, and so on. It goes beyond that, however. Though the 'programming tools' she uses to 'interface with the operating system of her mind' are things like meditation and lucid dreaming, she realizes that dreams arn't just a tool, they are also the point. Just exploring Virtual Spaces and dreamrealms isn't enough; to acheive personal enlightenment or help with Global Awakening, she has to explore the depths of her own psyche, to continuously challenge her own boundaries and perceptions. Strengths: This paradigm is much more creative then most Virtual Adept paradigm, much less static, and its been becoming less static as time goes on. Moreover, most Virtual Adepts, even if they can mentally connect to their computers via the Virtual Web, don't literally download and run computer programs into their mind. Victoria does that all the time. Then, of course, there are the obvious inherent advantages to the 'Reality Hacker' methodology itself.... Weaknesses: Becoming less static is one thing, but in the end, Victoria is still as limited to her 'tools' as other Virtual Adepts, even if she calls them by different names. More importantly and more significantly, the fact that she uses Mind to treat her brain as a computer means that she's vulnerable to computer viruses, as depicted in the 'Reality Hacker' link, above. If you thought getting spyware on your computer was bad, how about getting it in your mind? This could potentially apply to mental disorders of people whose dreams she invades, too. To make a long lesson short; always run your antivirus software and keep it up to date. ''Also, due to the emphasis on mental landscapes and dreamscapes, Quiet is perhaps more of an ongoing threat for Victoria then it is for other mages. Also, loosing track of how long its been since you returned to your body and fed it...or forgetting where your body was...could both be very, very bad. Avatar and Ascension '''Ascension': For Victoria, the quest for personal Ascension is the same as the quest for global awakening of the sleepers. You can't help the rest of the world if you don't help yourself, and you can't help yourself if you don't care about the world around you. Everything has to be in balance. Along those lines, her current vision of global awakening is exactly that; allowing the sleepers to all awaken to the fact that their dreams, which they can shape and control, are no less 'real' then the waking world. Avatar: Victoria's avatar has always had far more of a mystical bent then her. Even when she was a fairly standard Virtual Adept who looked at technology and magic in fairly static ways, it was always there, pushing her, prodding her into growing into something more. A calm, creative, purposeful avatar, its goal is for her to ascend, for her to push her boundaries. It pushes her to seek after new knowledge and information, and in this task it has largely succeeded in shifting Victoria's personal philosophies and bents towards its own. At first, before she realized the importance of dreams, she would mostly see it in her dreams, as a sort of 'Universal Google', most often, where she would type information into search engines and receive specific answers. Now that she dreams more often, especially as a lucid dreamer, she has not dreamed of the Universal Google again. Whether this means her avatar, as a Questing avatar, merely takes many different forms, or whether it is appearing less is hard for anyone to say; least of all Victoria, as she hasn't ever really given the whole Avatar thing much thought. OOC Note: I have half a mind that, lately, the Avatar has been manifesting as the 'Strangeness' flaw, especially while she's off in wierd mental landscapes, but I don't really know how viable that is, as interesting as it would be to have an avatar who only shows up in the form of wierd dream imagry and events, rather then any specific form. Backgrounds Sanctum: Unlike most Sanctums, Victoria's is not an actual physical place. Except it is... its rather hard to explain. By mixing the typical methods of creating a Sanctum with Mind and Correspondence, she's created a permanent 'Sanctuary' out of her own dreams. Essentially, a permanent dream that she can access via lucid dreaming/meditation/Mind 3/etc. She goes to this area by default when first dreaming each night, and stores information there in the same fashion most Virtual Adepts would store information on a computer. It works in all respects like a normal Sanctuary, it just happens to be in a drastically different form then most Mages'. Obviously, the Sanctum bonuses do not apply when she's venturing into the dreams of others, which she does very, very often. History More stuff and talky things. Etc If you want you can add in things like playlist, or other character information here. Chargen Sheet Chargen Sheet Application Workthrough Tradition: Virtual Adept Essence: Questing Stats: 7/5/3 Character Experience: Completed Prior Seekings: 2 Attributes: 7: Perception:3 Intelligence:4 Wits: 3 5: Charisma: 3 Manipulation: 3 Appearance: 2 3: Strength: 2 Dex: 2 Sta: 2 Abilities: 13/9/5 Talents: 5 Expression: 2 Empathy: 2 Primal-Urge: 1 Skills: 9 Meditation: 3, Technology: 2 - Computers, Research: 2 Performance: 1, Etiquette: 1 Knowledges: Cosmology: 3, Computer: 3, Enigmas: 2, Lore: Dreams 1, Science: 2 - Physics, Biology, Occult: 2, Investigation: 1 Academics 1 Backgrounds: 7 Avatar 2 Node 2 Sanctum: 2 Dream: 1 Willpower: 5 Banality: 4 Spheres: Correspondence: 1 via Tradition (+2 via Sphere Choices) Mind: 3 (via sphere choices) Merits/Flaws: Lifesaver (-3), Strangeness (-1), Driving Goal, (-3) Force of Personality (+2), Code of Honor (+1), Fast Learner (+3), Lightning Calculator (+1) ******************************************************** First 21 Freebies: Arete: 1-2, via Seeking, Arete 2-3, via Seeking (-8) Dream 1 to 5 (-4) -- For background reasons/Core Character Concept Reasons Willpower: 5 to 8: (-3) -- For personality reasons Abilities: Computer 3 to 4, (-2) -- Core Character Concept reasons Computer Specialty: Hacking Lore: Dreams 1 to 3 (-2) -- Core Character Concept Reasons Academics: 1 to 2 *********************** Spending 'Extra' experience points: Max 45 -''' 21 left: 24 Work in Progress''' Ethics 1 to 4: (+8) -- Personality reasons. Specialization: Fearlessness. Sensitivity 2 (+4) -- Personality Reasons. Insight 1 (+2) Persuasion 2: (+4) -- Personality Reasons, character archetype reasons ****** 18 Background: Arcane 2 (+2) Background: Avatar 2-3 (+1) Resources: 3 (+3) **** 24 Category:Character Concepts